The Croatian state attorney’s county office in Osijek has launched a probe against footballer Luka Modric for perjury in a recent court hearing in a corruption case concerning football club Dinamo Zagreb, local media reported on June 19.

The case concerns Former Dinamo Zagreb director Zdravko Mamic, for a long time the most powerful man in Croatian football, who is on trial for embezzlement and tax evasion. 

Modric claimed as a witness at the hearing held on June 13 that he had forgotten some specific details of his transfer from Dinamo to the British team Tottenham. 

The footballer, who now plays for Real Madrid, confirmed that he signed a deal with Dinamo to receive a 50-50 share of his €21mn transfer fee from Tottenham.

However, prosecutors in Osijek claim that Modric lied at the hearing and that he changed his testimony to mislead the court in favour of Mamic. They say the deal was signed in 2008, and not in 2004 as Modric testified.

If found guilty of perjury, Modric could be sentenced to anywhere between six months and five years in jail, according to Croatian legislation.

Another Croatian footballer who has since moved abroad, Liverpool defender Dejan Lovren, was due to testify on June 14 about his transfer from Dinamo to Lyon in 2010. However, the hearing has been postponed to September after Mamic fired his lawyer immediately before Lovren was just to give his testimony. 

Mamic and his brother Zoran Mamic were first arrested in mid-2015 on suspicion of tax evasion, bribery and other offences, which were reported to have cost the football club HRK118mn and the Croatian state HRK12mn.

In November 2015, Zdravko Mamic was placed in investigative custody after the finance ministry’s tax fraud investigators found that €10.1mn and £500,000 had been siphoned off from the football club through offshore companies since 2004.

Three months later, Croatia's anti-graft agency USKOK launched its third probe into Mamic, who at the time was still at the helm of Dinamo Zagreb, for alleged embezzlement. Mamic was also suspected of tax fraud, bribery and siphoning funds off from the club, resulting in total losses of at least €27mn for Dinamo.

The investigation also targeted his brother Zoran Mamic, the club’s coach, and his son Mario as well as former Dinamo director and the current top officials of the Croatian football federation (HNS), Damir Vrbanovic, businessmen Igor Krota and Sandro Stipancic as well as one other suspect.

In April 2016, anti-corruption police charged Mamic and other current and former senior officials from Dinamo Zagreb with tax evasion amounting to HRK12.2mn (€1.63mn) and siphoning off profits worth HRK116mn from player transfers.

Mamic and the other suspects are believed to have concluded fake contracts between Dinamo and companies from Hong Kong, Switzerland, the UAE, the UK, the US and several Caribbean countries for fictitious brokering services in player transfers.

Moreover, Mamic is suspected of concluding contracts that allowed certain players to receive 50% of future transfer fees, which should have been paid entirely to the club, and that this money then ended up in foreign companies.

Dinamo Zagreb is at the top of the Croatian First Football League (Prva HNL), having won most of the titles since the league was established in 1992. Despite the club’s popularity, Mamic is a controversial figure in Croatia, where he has made several violent verbal attacks on journalists and public figures as well as insulting ethnic and sexual minorities.